


Rabanastre

by Rahmi



Series: A New World Born [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Developing Relationship, Gen, Rabanastre, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2018-01-07 13:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahmi/pseuds/Rahmi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanderings around Ivalice: Rabanastre, no specified timeline. Penelo and Vaan hold a wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rabanastre

**Author's Note:**

> Made up holidays, yay!

Balthier has learned to listen to his instincts. He has excellent instincts, afterall, and it would be a shame to let them go to waste.

Or so he claims, at least, but if he had listened to his instincts he would have told Vaan no when the churl asked to relax in Rabanastre for a few days.

He blames the damnable lack of foresight on Vaan's... attributes. He keeps this to himself, as he's fairly sure it would make him more pathetic in Fran's eyes than simply losing their resident orphan thief has already made him. As it is, he had been distracted by the sweep of Vaan's hair against dark skin and missed the storm in his eyes and so here they were.

Here is the Sandsea. Vaan is not on the balcony, where Balthier is wont to sit when he wishes for a drink, but there is a pile of pale blond in one corner that Balthier makes a beeline for. Penelo had disappeared along with Vaan; bosom buddies, Balthier had thought at first, and then reluctantly pondered on the likely reasons for two teenagers to creep off into seedy streets.

Thankfully, they are both fully clothed.

Unfortunately, they are both extremely inebriated.

Balthier regards them and sighs. "And how is the weather in here, then, my lushes?"

"Wet," Penelo says brightly. She giggles, her fair hair blending with Vaan's, and waves a bottle of decidely inferior liquor at Balthier's person. "We're celebrating!"

"The Empire is crushing the life from your country; your princess has no way to lay claim to her birthright. What, exactly, are you celebrating?"

Vaan finally glances away from where he has been deeply contemplating his lap to smile blindly. Tearstains are fairly obvious on his face, even in the Sandsea's dim lighting. "I'm older than my brother," Vaan says.

"Your older brother?" Balthier clarifies.

The look Vaan gives him calls his sanity into question. "I don't have a little brother," he says, swinging Penelo's arm up so he can swig from her bottle. "Well, I did, but he died before he got a name, so I'm not talkin' about him."

Balthier rubs at his eyes with the side of one hand. "Then it is Reks?"

"That's what he said!" Penelo squints blearily at him before she reclaims her hand and traps the bottle between her thighs. "So we're celebrating. Can't celebrate by yourself, right?"

"It does seem to be a momentous occasion," he allows. Not one that Balthier personally would celebrate, granted, but Dalmascans are a strange lot with odd customs.

Penelo nods her head; Balthier's very good breeding keeps him from wrinkling his nose when she belches foul enough to bring to mind the undead. "Still not older than mine," she slurs. Her fingernails tap on the glass between her legs. "Got three more years."

Balthier reaches to pluck the bottle from Penelo. It is as dismal a year as he suspected, rot gut made from cactus, if he's not mistaken. His respect for Penelo goes up astronomically; she is not a large girl and yet she is still almost vertical.

"I believe that is quite enough for you, Penelo," he says anyway. There is a difference in being able to hold your alcohol and dying in a filthy street from overindulgence. "Follow my finger please," he continues, and has to sigh expansively when it takes her a good few moments to do so. "Right."

He hauls Penelo up by one skinny arm and ignores Vaan's slow slide from sitting to curled fetal. It is the work of a moment to wave a hand at he barkeep. "You make a habit to allow orphans to drink to excess?" he queries delicately.

The man snorts. "Only on a," and here he says a word that Balthier neither understands nor fully catches, which he takes to mean it is, indeed, a Dalmascan custom, "And only when they can pay. Vaan dumped a couple hunnerd gil at me earlier. Wasn't gonna question it."

Balthier is not a wet nurse, dammit. He is a sky pirate and before that he was a judge magister. That does not stop him from being forced to flag down one of Vaan's merry band of orphans.

"Where's Vaan gonna sleep?" Penelo slurs quietly into his ear.

He pats her on the back. "Where are you sleeping?" he asks.

Blue eyes blink slowly at him. "Migelo's," she manages, "Vaan's not 'llowed to sleep there 'cause he still thinks I'm gonna get a bride price." She giggles again.

Balthier recognizes the child coming towards him with something like a sigh of relief. "Your virtue will be quite safe for the night," he tells her, already turning his mind to the problem of finding Vaan a place where the same could be said for him, and then Penelo laughs.

"Reks took care of that," she snickers loudly enough that the entire bar pauses for a long moment. "Was gonna marry him you know. Gave me turq-" she stutters to a stop with a bemused look until Vaan mutters, "Turquoise," from his spot on the floor.

He had not actually known that. Like most, he had assumed that Vaan and Penelo were paramours quietly blundering their way through adolescent love. "I wasn't aware," he says.

"She always starts talkin' about her engagement gems when she gets drunk," the urchin says with an eye roll. "I'll make sure she gets to Migelo's."

Which leaves him with one drunk street child, staring up at him from the floor with a small, sloppy smile and a wet face. "Yeah," Vaan murmurs, "Everyone thinks she's my girl." He rubs a hand across his mouth and then lets it drop next to his head on the filthy floor.

Balthier sighs and drops to his haunches. Vaan is not as drunk as he took him for, he sees now. The churl is simply hiding his tears in the curve of one arm.

"I don't see the purpose in celebrating something that is clearly making you miserable," Balthier says gently.

"You're Empire," Vaan says into his elbow, "Don't expect you to get it."

It stings rather more than it should. Balthier rocks back on his heels, feeling his face fall into a familiar sneer. "Your first lesson on sky piracy is that a pirate has allegiance to none but themselves," he finds himself saying.

"You still think like where you came from, though." Vaan pushes himself upright and holds out his hand. "Can I have my stuff back?"

"This stuff?" Balthier asks, raising a single brow. He shakes the bottle of rot gut in Vaan's face before dropping it back down to his side with a sigh. "I think, like your small, incredibly inebriated friend, you have had enough for one night, Vaan."

Vaan eyes him again, snorts, and then wipes his nose on the back of his hand. "It's tradition," he says.

"This is one tradition I rather think you can do without."

"Not your choice."

"As I am the one taking you home for the night, I think it has become my choice. Up."

The churl is coordinated enough to reach the moogling, but drunk enough to sick up alcohol all over the cobblestones of the West Gate. It is late and that is the only reason Balthier does not wash his hands of this mess. Instead, he sighs, pats Vaan on the shoulder a few times until he stops retching, and steers him into the Aerodrome with more than a little relief.

There are quarters on the Strahl. He can be done with both this and Fran's silent, icy disapproval in one swoop. Dragging Vaan up the ramp is an exercise in undignified behavior; he is extremely glad there is none around to witness it.

Vaan's quarters are precariously close to the Strahl's magicite cache, but he is the only one who does not complain of her hums in the middle of the night. It has endeared him to Fran, at the very least. She has almost ripped the head from Lady Ashe's shoulders more than once for maligning their fair ship.

He walks Vaan to his berth and sets the boy in it by the simple expediant of dropping his bracing arm and stepping backwards. Vaan's resulting fall into the sheets is decidely graceless, but the humor inherent in it is almost enough to make up for Balthier's evening. Almost.

"Sleep it off," he advises Vaan before he moves to leave. He doesn't know what, precisely, this is about, but he has never met a problem that hasn't looked at least slightly better in the morn.

Vaan makes some sort of rude snuffling noise into his linen. "How old are you?" he calls quietly.

Balthier turns to lean against his girl's bulkhead and finds Vaan staring back at him. "I don't believe it is any of your business," he says.

Vaan draws his hands up to his face. "Reks was seventeen when he died," he says into them. "My parents were thirty-seven."

"A ripe old age," Balthier says and then contemplates shooting himself. His poor departed mother would be horrified at his lack of basic manners. "Apologies," he murmurs in the face of Vaan's wounded eyes. "The hour is late and I am not watching my tongue as I should."

One of Vaan's hands waves away his apology. "It's just," he says, "I never really expected to live this long, you know?"

"I can't imagine why not." Balthier eases back into the room. It is not a large room; the Strahl is a grand mistress, but she was not built for the comfort of guests. His own chambers are spacious. This is decidely not. "You are the epitome of deliberation before action."

Vaan snorts lightly. "Yeah, Reks always said that about me." He thumbs fresh tears out of his eyes with a slow, quiet motion and sighs. "I always figured I'd die before I passed his," and again, a slur, "day."

The word or words are still slurred. Balthier has had much time to sort out Vaan's particular lack of enunciation but he doesn't think that word was in standard. If so, they'll mean nothing to him, of course; Dalmasca's native language is notoriously difficult to learn unless one happens to be either Dalmascan or Nabradian. Being neither, and a blue-blooded Archadian to boot, Balthier is hopelessly lost.

Even so, he was under the impression that it was a dying language, even before Archadia invaded. Two plagues in under a decade and a royalty desperately trying to integrate its people enough to draw foreign aid had led to the language's decline.

"I did not know you spoke the language," he says finally.

The impish grin that spreads across Vaan's mouth is at odds with his reddened eyes and cheeks, but Balthier finds himself smiling back all the same. "My parents were traditionalists. It took a while for me to learn Standard when I was a kid, but it's kinda nice now," Vaan says; Balthier finds himself thinking that the churl is strangely eloquent for someone who vomitted in public not thirty minutes prior.

"The Empire doesn't stoop to learning the local language," he continues, "So it's a lot easier to pretend you're a stupid kid who'd never have the guts to steal from them if they think you're just too stupid to learn Standard."

And there is the quiet flash of intelligence that keeps intriguing Balthier so. Given a year or two to mature and find his footing, Vaan will be a formidible sky pirate. If he can be kept alive for that long.

Eighteen today, if Balthier understands this drinking binge correctly. Still very young. He does not contemplate what he was doing and whom he was killing at a similar age. "I am two and twenty," Balthier says.

"Oh."

"Twenty-two, Vaan."

"I knew what you meant," Vaan says crankily. His eyebrows are starting to draw together in pain. There is a skin of water on the table next to his berth. Balthier none so subtly motions to when Vaan begins to massage his skull.

The motion is, incidentally, far too subtle for Vaan. "Why're you swatting imaginary flies?" he asks cluelessly.

Blathier heaves a very long suffering sigh and leans to pick up the water skin. It is full, like he assumed it would be. Vaan is a bundle of insecurity and naivety, but he is not a simpleton; there is always water around their desert children. "Water, Vaan."

"Not yet," Vaan says. He yawns, affording Balthier a spectacular view of the inner workings of his mouth.

"You'll not thank yourself for this tomorrow," Balthier points out.

"No, I know, I just have to do something first." He shoves himself to his feet, lurching slightly, and reaches for the knapsack on the floor. Balthier lays a steadying hand on the churl's shoulder to keep him from falling face first into the Strahl's less than forgiving bulk. "And what is so important?" he asks.

"Gotta eat the-" again, words Balthier can't quite catch "-before new day," he says. The words trip off of Vaan's tongue easily. They still mean nothing to Balthier.

He watches as Vaan triumphantly pulls a earthenware jar painted in gay Rabanastre colors from his bag. When he pulls the stopper, a mild aroma of sweetness fills the little room, but Balthier is more distracted by Vaan dipping a finger and thumb into the jar to fish out a piece of what he is choosing to call fruit.

"Sweetmeat?" Balthier does not watch the way Vaan sucks the juice off his arm. It would be unseemly.

"It's not meat," Vaan says around his mouthful.

Now that Balthier knows Standard isn't the churl's first language, his laughable ignorance is not quite so laughable. "Sweeties," Balthier elaborates.

"Oh, yeah." He swallows his mouthful and tilts the jar in Balthier's direction. "I know you didn't know Reks, but you can have some if you want. Penelo'll be downing them by the jar at Migelo's by now."

How can one turn down that kind of offer? "I shall," he says. The fruit is unfamiliar, but very sweet on his tongue.

Vaan scoops out another handful for himself. "You're supposed to do this with your family," Vaan says lightly, the slightest burr to his words. "'S why me and Penelo were drinking together. She'd have been Reks's if he'd come back from the war."

"I must admit I am entirely ignorant of Dalmascan mourning rituals."

It takes a moment for Vaan to focus back on him; he seems to be in the forlorn stage of inebriation. "Oh," he says dumbly. "It was Reks's favorite, so I'm eating it. I put some on his grave earlier. To apologize for bein' older than him."

"The purpose of your ritual is to apologize for being alive?" Balthier's eyebrows rise as he wipes his hands on his kerchief. A strange people indeed.

"For upsetting the order," Vaan says. He licks at his fingers like a dog licks for scraps. "I'm not supposed to get older than him. You don't want to make Ashlesha mad, so you have to act like it's his birthday by eating his favorite foods and stuff, then say you're sorry. And, anyway, I miss him."

Ashlesha is one of the quaint gods the Dalmascans believe in and the rest of Ivalice does not; if he is not mistaken, Ashelia B'Nargin is named after it. Balthier says nothing for a long moment, listening to Vaan make soft, miserable noises over his food until the jar is empty and Vaan is licking his fingers clean.

"Will you take the water now?" Balthier asks.

He taps Vaan on the chest once, then has to rescue the jar of sweetmeats when Vaan goes unexpectedly backwards, pinwheeling his arms all the way. "It's a good thing this room is small," Balthier observes, "Else you might have damaged that thick skull of yours."

"What'd you do that for?" Vaan explodes from the cot.

"It wasn't my intent," Balthier allows. He sets the empty jar against Vaan's side; the churl's hands curl around it immediately. "Drink your water, Vaan, and go to sleep. I daresay the night has been long and entirely uncomfortable for the both of us."

Just like that, Vaan's expression crumbles into abject misery. Balthier feels rather like he kicked a puppy even if he has no earthy idea why Vaan is suddenly sobbing into his arm in a messy, unattractive manner.

Balthier is rarely speechless. It is a disconcerting turn of events, one that he would much rather do without. "Vaan?" He makes a conscious effert to gentle his voice and hesitantly reaches out for one faintly trembling shoulder.

"I miss him," Vaan says miserably. He hiccups.

Wonderful. "Would you like me to find Penelo?" Balthier ventures.

He is not prepared for Vaan to suddenly twist and sling an arm about his waist.

Balthier takes a long moment to decide if he is dreaming or not, and then takes another, even longer moment to decide what to do about it. He is, after all, the leading man. Not the wet nurse.

Not prepared at all, though he does begin to make the same nonsense soothing noises he remembers his father (may his insanity not be catching, faram) uttering. "Come now," he murmurs, "This is downright uncomfortable, Vaan."

Vaan sniffles loudly against his waistcoat; Balthier is hard pressed to think of anyone else in existance who would dare use hand tooled leather as a snot-rag. "I miss him," he says again, plaintively.

Half of him wants to point out that there is no use crying about what you cannot change, not when you are on a journey to save your country. The larger part of him knows that there is no logic involved in grieving or alcohol and Vaan is decidedly tipsy. Hiding it remarkably well for most of the evening, but tipsy all the same.

"Tell me of your brother," is what he finally settles on. There is snot on his vestaments, which Fran will surely judge him for in the morning, but he finds the idea of her laughing scorn not half as disagreeable as the thought of leaving Vaan alone.

Vaan is silent for a long minute. Balthier pets the back of his head rather like one would a favored hound and tries very hard to ignore the wet he can feel seeping into his waistcoat. "Surely you have much to say of the vaunted Reks?"

A watery snort is his answer. "He was really bossy," Vaan finally mutters.

Balthier settles back to listen.


End file.
